


Hepatomancy

by bomberqueen17



Series: The Lost Kings [5]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars: Shattered Empire
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Animals, F/M, Real Life, Wedding Planning, Weddings, space chickens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-15 02:18:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9214547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17
Summary: You didn't think I'd write a fluffy story about Kes and Shara getting married, did you?Kes's mother goes to Alderaan to make arrangements for Shara to go there to give birth, and comes back with some kind of secret. Shara is increasingly pregnant, and Kes is run off his feet with the wedding preparations and the general hard labor of running the extended-family's ranch.After the wedding, they find out what Lita was hiding.Hepatomancy: the practice of examining the livers of sacrificed animals for the purposes of fortune-telling.





	

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING:  
> The opening scene depicts Kes’s extended family engaged in the processing of livestock for meat, and therefore has mentions of blood, viscera, and animal death. It’s described realistically, with a kind of businesslike detachment, and is drawn from my extensive personal first-hand experience at this exact activity. (My sister raises pastured poultry as cruelty-free as she can manage; I work for her as a finish plucker and eviscerator in the summers.) Kes does reflect on what he’s doing, just as we do as we do it. 
> 
> YOU DON'T HAVE TO READ THAT PART! Please take care of yourself! If this is gonna really gross you out, I don’t want to upset you. 
> 
> I have posted a summary [here](http://dragonlady7.dreamwidth.org/1977811.html), that contains all of the information from that scene, all the character beats and information, without any particular description of the process.  
> Go here to read it, and when you come back, click this anchor, if I can make it work, which will take you to the scene following. 
> 
> If the anchor doesn't work, scroll fast until you see the same image I've inserted at the top of the section below. I have clumsily drawn you an image stolen from an anthropological textbook about Maya weaving, and when you see that image a second time, you can stop scrolling, and there'll be mentions of blood, mostly Kes's (he cut his finger), but no further gore.  
> If you're interested in knowing more about poultry handling, let me know, I have a ton of information. 
> 
> _____________________________________
> 
> EDIT THE ANCHOR LINKS DON'T WORK ugh. Sorry, i can't fix it. Glad now i drew the damn picture.

 

Last chance: [Click here](skip) to skip to anchor point after first section.  
_________________________________

Kes stuck the knife to the magnetic strip on the wall, and wiped his face on his bare sweaty shoulder, grimacing. He knew there was blood on his face but he didn’t have anything clean to wipe it off with. His hands were disgusting.

“How many left?” Tito asked, looking up from the scalding tank. He was holding two chanticlos by the feet in one (gloved) hand, and had a chrono in the other (ungloved), timing the scald exactly so the feathers would be loose enough to pull off.

Kes leaned back and glanced out the door at the crates on the trailer. He blew a long breath out through his lips as he counted, and leaned back in, blinking at the relative darkness. “Like twenty,” he said. “We’re mostly there.”

“Twenty,” Tito grumbled, hauling the carcasses out of the hot water and letting them drip a moment.

“Like another hour, tops,” Kes said.

“If the eviscerators can keep up,” Marita said from the plucking table. Ori and Hanto were doing the rough plucking, and she was doing the heads and feet and finish plucking.

“You’re not suggesting that we’re not holding up our end, are you?” Norasol inquired mildly, sticking her head around the corner. She was in the next room with Salah and Karzai.

“I’m not suggesting anything,” Marita retorted.

Tito thunked the two scalded carcasses down on the table in front of Ori, who grabbed one and stripped the flight feathers with one practiced pull.

“Two on the left,” Kes said, indicating which of the birds he had in their four restraint cones were dead. The others were still bleeding a bit. Tito nodded, and pulled the two birds out, arranging one foot from each bird between his heavy-gloved fingers and picking up the chrono with his other hand.

Kes went and pulled his next victim out of the crate, holding the animal upside down with its wings held firmly. Their circulatory systems couldn’t handle the inversion, and they would lose consciousness rapidly. He put the upside-down bird into the duraplast cone, and reached up from the bottom to grab the bird’s head and pull it down straight. He unstuck the knife from the magnet, and held the feathers down away from the bird’s neck, stretching its head out so he could cut the throat cleanly.

The bird jerked in reflex, and spattered blood across his face. Again. Tito saw, and laughed.

“Sick!” he said.

“Thanks,” Kes said drily, wiping his face ineffectually on his sweaty forearm. “Ugh.” He stuck the knife back to the magnet, and went back for his next victim. Usually he’d get it in the face maybe once in a whole day, usually not even that, but it had just kept happening today.

In the last stages of bleeding out, the birds’ bodies would convulse. The last one from the previous batch was doing that now, shuddering and kicking. The other thing they did was loose their bowels, so there was shit everywhere. Mostly, it was confined to the restraining cones, but occasionally death throes would send shit flying through the air. As Kes stepped back into the room, that happened, and he recoiled as a big gob of shit sailed across the room and landed right in the middle of the back of Marita’s neck, just under the knot of the kerchief she had tied over her hair.

Everyone yelled in horror, though Tito was absolutely laughing more than yelling.

“Oh _no_ , girl,” Kes said, clutching the bird he’d just retrieved to his chest.

“Fuck,” Marita said, making a truly pathetic disgusted-frown face. Tito made up for laughing by finding a rag and wiping the mess off for her.

“That’s what happens when you talk shit,” Norasol said. There was a reason the eviscerators were around the corner; once the birds were opened, they tried to keep them away from the dirt. Chanticlos were impressively filthy, but so far none had managed to throw any shit around a corner.

“Oho,” Tito said, rinsing the rag off in the handwashing sink. “See?”

Marita gave Kes a sour frown. “I didn’t _even_ talk shit,” she said mournfully.

“I don’t control the weather,” Kes said, and turned his bird upside-down. It flapped briefly, because he didn’t have the wings held tightly, and he had to kind of cram it into the cone and then stand there holding its head for a moment before it got woozy enough that he could kill it.

“Bird shit isn’t weather,” Marita said, but she went back to work, neatly twisting and pulling the head off the next carcass before flipping it onto its breast to cut the legs off one by one. There was a trick to it, holding them by the feet and bending the joint so the blade could slide in between the bones, and she was an expert at it by now.

“In here, it is,” Tito said.

“Truth,” Kes said, managing this time to dodge the spurt of blood. “Xacristo, it must be an adverse moon phase or something, they’re bleeding like crazy!”

Norasol blamed everything on adverse moon phases, and Kes hadn’t been able to discern much rhyme or reason to it. She’d admitted that she was pretty sure everything on this forsaken little planet was an adverse moon phase. “How are the livers?” Marita asked. “Good moon phase for livers?”

“Could be better, could be worse,” Norasol said. Kes stepped over to where he could see around the corner, and she had her hand inside a bird’s carcass. She pulled her hand out, bringing with it the entrails of the bird, and splayed them out across the gleaming steel table, poking through them.  
“Aw,” Kes said, because she hadn’t gotten everything in one go, “missed the heart.” Sometimes if you got the upper respiratory and digestive systems detached from the top, you could wriggle your hand out and pull out the whole shebang, even the trachea, all in one go, and it was really satisfying to do. He’d been able to pretty frequently, before his final growth spurt had made his hands too big. Now he was out of practice, but even with practice he’d probably not be as fast as he used to be. He’d been faster than Norasol, once.

“I got what I meant to,” she said with some asperity, and neatly separated the gizzard, pitching it into a basket on the back of the counter. She put her hand back in and retrieved the heart and liver together, and neatly pinched off the gall bladder, then dropped both lobes of the liver into a bucket of water on the back of the counter. The heart she dropped into a third container, and then she picked up the remaining entrails and dumped them into a big bucket on the floor. She went back in to sweep through and check for stray pieces of lung and kidney, and make sure she’d gotten the upper digestive tract out cleanly as well, before sliding the bird along the counter past Salah, who picked up her own in-progress bird to let it pass.

Karzai took the bird down to his station and went to work on it with the sharp attachment to scrape the last bits of lung still adhering to the ribcage, and Kes stepped out of the way so Norasol could retrieve another bird from the bin Marita was dumping her finished ones in.

Kes went back out to where Tito was poking at the most recent birds. The other two cones were empty. “Not yet,” Kes said, as one of the birds twitched. It was dead, but its nervous system didn’t know it yet. They needed to hang until they’d really bled clean, or the blood would pool in the carcasses while they cooled.

“I know, I know,” Tito said. He fiddled with his chrono as Kes retrieved another bird. “Good batch this time, they seem pretty big.”

“Yeah,” Kes said, “guess the place didn’t go totally to shit while we were gone.”

Marita laughed. “If we were relying on either of you two for anything we’d be screwed,” she said.

Kes cut the bird’s throat, suppressing a shudder as he stuck the knife back to the magnet bar. Sometimes, despite having done this for literally as long as he could remember, he’d forget and think too hard about what he was doing. They were really stupid animals, and they were really tasty, and they were a crucial source of both nutrition and income, but he really didn’t like killing anything, not even them. It was easy, but that still didn’t make it effortless.

He picked up another bird and stroked its soft feathers as it stared blankly at him. He inverted it, careful to hold the wings down so it didn’t panic, and glanced up at the sky, checking the weather. This time of year here there were a lot of storms, and nobody was any good at predicting them.

Lita was supposed to be coming back today. She’d been on some diplomatic wild goose chase, as everything was nowadays; Alderaan remained the only entity that recognized the Xicul refugees as a coherent cultural identity, stateless as they were. But she had to keep trying. And it was a good excuse to go over to Alderaan and make sure they were ready for Shara to come give birth there.

Kes wasn’t a citizen of Alderaan, but having been born there gave him at least the right to claim sanctuary at any Alderaanian embassy. Their son would have the same fallback status, at least, provided Lita got permission for it. Which they didn’t anticipate any trouble with.

At least the weather was holding. Kes stepped back inside, blinking as his eyes readjusted, and put the chanticlo into the cone. He picked up the knife and tugged the neck feathers down, and the blade parted skin and flesh and blood vessel easily enough, but he couldn’t help but shudder again as the semiconscious bird flinched and blood started to flow.

“How’s your back?” he asked Tito. “You wanna switch for a while?” Scalding the birds was hard work; they got heavy when their feathers were waterlogged.

“I’m all right,” Tito said, frowning. “You want to switch anyway?”

Kes grimaced, but shook his head. “No, it’s fine,” he said.

“You look like a horrorshow,” Tito observed. “Blood everywhere. It’s a good look, on you.”

“Thanks,” Kes said, unenthused. It wasn’t usually this messy. He wished he’d worn a shirt with at least half-sleeves, just to wipe his face with. He had a waterproof apron on, which wouldn’t do him any good to clean his face, and hadn’t thought to put any handkerchiefs in his pockets. He could go wash, but that was just asking for something even messier to happen to him right after.

“You should go in like that and scare Shara,” Tito said. “Just go in and give her a big hug. Bonus points if she’s wearing a white shirt.”

Shara had volunteered to help Zia put the lunch together, since Lita wouldn’t be home to run the kitchen. Sento had gone with Lita as far as Alderaan, and would be flying her home.

Kes made a face. “I want her to actually go through with marrying me,” he said. “I’m not letting her see me like this.” The wedding was in six days. Everyone who could possibly make it home was doing so. Some of Shara’s friends were coming, too. It was exciting, but they’d been working like crazy for the last ten days to get everything ready, and today’s chanticlo processing was just one among many busy days.

“It’s a _great_ look, babe,” Tito said, pulling a pair of carcasses out of the scald water and letting them drip. “Super manly. Chicks dig that.”

“Check your temperature,” Marita said, looking up from her work, “we’re having trouble with the pinfeathers.”

“Now she tells me,” Tito said, bringing the two dripping carcasses over and plunking them down next to Ori.

“Your hands were full before,” Marita said, “you couldn’t have done anything.”

“True,” Kes pointed out, and helped Tito adjust the burner.

There was a clatter from the other room. The eviscerators always made intermittent clattering noises as they put their knives down, but this was slightly louder, and Kes looked over in concern.

Norasol came around the corner, shedding her apron and hanging it on the peg on the wall. “I have to go for a moment,” she said, and she had that distant look on her face like she got sometimes when she was thinking hard about the sorts of things she couldn’t explain.

“Should I take over for you?” Kes asked. “Tito could kill and scald.”

“Maybe,” she said, but she wasn’t really paying attention to him. She was staring back toward the house. “I have to go.”

“Is it--” Kes’s tongue stuck in his mouth, in worry; what could she tell, from here? He glanced out the door, though, and saw the speeder-- Sento and Lita were back. How had she heard that? He hadn’t heard that.

It didn’t pay to wonder, with Norasol.

“Shara’s fine,” she said absently, patting his shoulder as she walked past. He watched her go, then looked at Tito.

“I can do both,” Tito said. “We’ll just have to slow down.” He made a face at Kes, and went and pulled two of the dead birds out of the cones. “We’d have to anyway, you’re so slow in there!”

“Ha,” Kes said, his heart not in it, and went and washed his hands, scrubbing them well to get all the filth off. He hit them with the harsh sanitizer, too, for good measure; he was going from the dirtiest job to the one that had to be the cleanest, which wasn’t optimal.  

“She left right in the middle of a bird,” Salah said quietly, annoyed. She wasn’t from here, she didn’t know Norasol as well as Kes did.

“I got it,” Kes said, and took off his filthy apron, put Norasol’s on instead (which was filthy too, but with different, cleaner and more intimate sorts of filth), and went to her station. There was a carcass there, with the entrails pulled out, and the liver had been separated but was still sitting on the counter. Kes picked it up, intending to throw it into the bucket with the other livers, but paused.

“Oh, that’s weird,” Salah said, glancing over. The liver was dotted with tiny white granular spots. “I’ve never seen that before.”

“It happens sometimes,” Kes said. You saw all kinds of weird stuff, eviscerating. Once he’d gotten a bird with two anuses. Sometimes you found weird structures of feathers and bone inside the animals. Sometimes they had malformed organs, or improperly-healed wounds, or parasites. There was a whole spectrum of gross and weird stuff you could encounter in this job.  

This was just a diseased liver. You saw stuff like this all the time. He threw it into the gut bucket, and went back in to check for the heart, but the bird was clean.

No reason to take it as a bad omen. He rinsed off the bird and handed it down to Karzai, and went to get another one. It was a long time since he’d done this, and he picked up Norasol’s knife, weighing it in his hand a moment. It was a nice knife, with a blade worn thin by many sharpenings, and a heavy carved handle.

He grabbed the bird securely by the body, and made the first cut, just above the vent, just big enough to put two fingers in, and neatly cut around the rest of the vent, leaving it attached to the lower end of the intestines. He put the knife down, turned the bird, worked his fingers in from the neck opening, sweeping to break the membranes sealing off the body cavity, to loosen the attachment of the crop and esophagus and trachea, and break the seal so he wouldn’t be pulling against a vacuum when he tried to remove the entrails.

Working his hand into the hole he’d made was tricky. It had been easier when his hands were smaller. He’d been quite small pretty late, and even Norasol had started to waver from her certainty that he’d have his father’s stature. He’d suddenly shot up like a weed when he was nearly seventeen, growing an agonizing twenty centimeters in a season, sometimes outgrowing clothes overnight. And it had kept up until he was the tallest man in their group. The worst part had been the hunger; he’d been simply unable to possibly eat enough not to be ravenous all the time. He still dreamed about the awful gnawing hollow sensation of it, sometimes.

He got three of his fingers in and worked them to separate the membranes holding the animal’s organs in place, grimacing a little at how warm the carcass still was-- chanticlos had higher body temperatures when alive than humans did, and so they were still really hot inside by this point, fifteen minutes dead or so.

This was so familiar as to be instinctive, the normal structures-- soft, soft intestines, the firm roundness of the gravel-and-muscle gizzard, the smooth tapering lobes of liver, dissolving flimsiness of lung, the oblong lump of heart-- and then he encountered something sharp and hard and _wrong_ , and yanked his hand out with a startled exclamation of disgust.

“What?” Salah asked.

“Ugh,” Kes said, composing himself, and gingerly reached back in. He grabbed the gizzard, which would serve well enough as a handle, and pulled the whole mass of entrails out. It didn’t come neatly, of course. And there, in the middle, was an accretion of some kind, maybe some foreign body that had gotten into the body cavity and then attacked by the immune system. “Ugh, it’s just-- it’s a tumor or growth or something, ugh.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that either,” Salah said, peering over.

“Ew,” Karzai said. “You get all the gross ones today, huh?”

Kes made a face, and made himself reach back into the bird and get the rest of the viscera, the heart and lungs and-- ugh, he hadn’t loosened the esophagus enough, he had to wrap it around his fingers and really pull hard to try to get it. It gave suddenly, and he knew that meant it had broken and he’d left the crop.

“Ew,” Salah was saying. She’d pulled the offending accretion over and was poking at it with the tip of her knife.

“Don’t,” Kes said, and took it from her and threw it into the gut bucket.

“What is it?” she asked, craning her neck curiously.

“They’re bad luck,” Kes said, which wasn’t quite what it was. Normal procedure was to let Norasol look at them, but she’d said, if you didn’t know what you were doing, it was better to leave them be. He was leaving it be. He shook himself off a little, and went back in to get the crop out of the bird’s neck opening before sliding the carcass down to Karzai.

He went and got another bird. Tito was swearing at his chrono. “I’m fine,” Tito said, seeing his concerned look.

“You got blood on your face,” he pointed out.

“The little fuckers are squirty today,” Tito said.

“I told you,” Kes said, and went back to the table.

He took a couple tries to pinch the skin so he could put the first cut in over the vent again, listening to Karzai humming a pop tune. It was a running joke Karzai would do, where he’d pick pop songs and take out the word “love” and replace it with “lung” while he was de-lunging the carcasses, and he’d come up with a bunch of good ones today. It only worked in Basic; none of them had come up with any similarly good puns in Iberican yet, though Karzai devoted a lot of thought to it.

Like, a _lot_ of thought, probably a lot more than was healthy, but if anyone was devoted to puns, it was Karzai.

“I can’t liiiiiiiiiiive, without your luuuuungs,” Karzai crooned shrilly, when he got to the chorus in his hummed performance.

“That’s a weird one,” Salah said, and Kes laughed, wriggling his fingers in to hold the vent so he could cut around the rest of it.

“Most of my job on this mortal plane is to make things weird,” Karzai said.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Kes said, dropping his knife and yanking his hand out of the bird. The blade had slipped, and had caught the pad of his finger through the skin of the bird.

“How bad,” Salah said tersely, catching him by the elbow.

Kes sighed, looking at the blood welling from his middle finger. He’d caught himself pretty square, at least, in the meat of the pad rather than in any of the fiddly bits at the joint. “It’s fine,” he said. “Bad enough. I gotta go clean it.” And put a bandage on it, and put a waterproof covering over that. He couldn’t risk contaminating the animal with his blood; they sold a lot of the meat, it wasn’t just for their own use. They had to abide by sanitary regulations, and that very definitely meant no human blood in the carcasses.

“Damn it,” Marita said, seeing him walk out to the sink. “Blood?”

“Broke the skin,” Kes said. And then some.

“Guess those things are bad luck after all,” Salah said, looking into the gut bucket again.

“Leave it,” Kes warned her.

“I wasn’t going to touch it,” she said, a little taken aback by Kes’s intensity.

He flexed the cut finger, looking at the edges of the wound. He should probably glue it. It was bleeding like crazy, which was good to clean it out, but ugh. “Sorry,” he said.

“Go,” Tito said, “take care of it, we’re fine. Send Norasol back out though, huh?”

“Yeah,” Kes said, grimacing, took off Norasol’s apron, and went to the house.

********************************************************************************************************************************

********************************************************************************************************************************

Shara was standing by the door, looking absolutely stunningly beautiful-- she had her hair half-down, all loose in ringlets, and was wearing a blue dress with a flowing skirt and a grubby apron tied high over the soft curve of her belly, and Kes blinked at her sort of dumbstruck for a moment. She was looking back into the house, so she didn’t notice him until he stuck his heel into the boot-jack by the door and yanked off his boot.

She turned, saw him, and shrieked, backing away, hands over her mouth.

“What,” he said, baffled, and realized his hand was dripping blood all down his arm. “Oh, it’s not-- it’s not that bad! It’s just a little cut!”

Zia appeared in the far doorway, catching at the door frame in alarm. “Xacristo, Kes, you’re a fucking mess,” she said, and only then did Kes remember about the blood on his face and in his hair.

“Fucking _hell_ ,” Shara said crossly. “What the _fuck_.”

“Sorry,” Kes said, getting his other boot off. “Zia, can you grab me a rag or something, I don’t want to drip on the floor.”

“Is that all chanticlo blood?” Shara asked.

“Well,” Kes said, “it was, but then I cut myself, so, no.”

Zia hovered near him while he rinsed his finger in the kitchen sink. “I’m fine,” he said, but noticed that Shara was hovering too, in the far doorway, hands folded across her ribs, looking worried and not about him. “What?”

Zia leaned in, and spoke quietly. “Lita and Sento just got back, and that was fine, and then Norasol came sweeping in looking like a stormcloud, and grabbed your mother and dragged her off down the hall and they’ve been arguing.”

“About what?” Kes stared at her, baffled. Lita and Norasol never argued, it was one of the uncanny pillars of his upbringing.

“I don’t know,” Zia said, “I can’t understand what they’re saying. They’re using all code.”

That was bad. Lita was extremely fond of codes, and there were indirect ways of talking about almost anything; Kes had spent his whole life knowing how to have conversations without ever once mentioning the real thing you were talking about. But of course, Norasol and Lita had developed that to an art-form. Kes devoted a lot of his attention to parsing their new code phrases, at any particular time. They had ones that they used that they knew he knew, but then they had another layer, constantly evolving, sometimes even single-use phrases built out of inversions, elisions, allusions, references, and knowing eye contact. Their latest code phrase for him, he was pretty sure, was just a syllable and a hand gesture. When they wanted him to know they were talking about him, they referred to him as Little Bird, and always had.

Shara abruptly crossed the room and leaned on the counter next to him. “Ooh, you’d better glue that, it’s deep,” she said, putting her hand at the small of his back. Her sudden attentiveness was rapidly explained when Lita swept into the room, chin high.

“Kes, darling,” she said, and made a face. “You’re a mess.”

“We’re not done,” he said. “I cut myself, I have to get cleaned up and get back out there.”

“Oh dear,” Lita said.

Shara took Kes’s hand gently between hers and disinfected the cut. “How was Alderaan?” she asked.

“Everything is all set,” Lita said, beaming sweetly. “I spoke to Queen Breha herself, she was delighted at the news.”

“Really,” Shara said, taken aback. She glanced over at Kes, who grinned. It wasn’t like they were big shots or anything, but they _did_ know the Organas personally, after all these years. It _was_ pretty cool.

“I saw Leia,” Lita said to Kes, “she says hello, she was so pleased to hear you were getting married, Kes.”

“Oh, how’s she doing?” Kes asked. Bail and Breha’s daughter was only a year or two younger than he was, and they’d played together a bit as kids. She’d mostly bossed him around, and he’d been too busy being On His Best Behavior to stand up for himself much, but they’d had some good times. “I haven’t seen her since-- she must be nineteen now?”

“I think so,” Lita said, “right around there anyway.”

“Will she be there when we come?” Kes asked.

“She said she hopes so,” Lita said, “but you know she has so much to do with the Imperial Senate nowadays. I’m sure she’ll come by, though.”

Shara held pressure on Kes’s finger for a moment, strong and sure and competent, and Kes wished he weren’t so covered in stinking filth, so that he could lean against her and smell her hair.

Norasol appeared suddenly in the doorway. “Stay in here, Kes,” she said. “I”ll go finish out there.”

“They need us both,” Kes said. Shara carefully peeled the gauze away and dabbed the adhesive across the cut, and he bit his lip and didn’t make any sound as it stung fiercely.

“I can handle it,” Norasol said frostily, and stalked out into the mudroom to put her boots back on.

Zia and Shara traded looks, and Kes met each of their eyes in turn, but Lita was watching Norasol go. “Is everything okay?” he asked finally, since clearly it was on him to speak.

“Hm?” Lita blinked, perhaps too innocent. Shara ducked her head and focused intently on wrapping the bandage around his finger, to hold the adhesive in place and let it work. “Oh, yes, everything’s fine.”

Kes stared at her for a long moment, baffled. She’d put him off, before, when he’d asked questions she couldn’t or wouldn’t answer, but she’d never been so unconvincing about it. This didn’t feel right at all. “Is it raining, then?” he asked her. Often in the past they’d made codes using weather as stand-ins for political conditions. Rain meant undecided outcomes, usually of elections or committees; wind indicated adverse factions, with east being hawkish and west being doveish, or more specifically filled in with factions relevant to whatever situation was being discussed. The Empire was always north, and south was, more recently, the Rebellion.

Lita looked at him, something pinched around the corners of her mouth, like she was sad or guilty. “There’s a storm in the south, I think,” she said, but then smiled. “But our welcome, at least, is assured on Alderaan.” She patted his arm and walked away.

“What?” Shara murmured, giving him a squint-eyed look.

“Later,” he answered, watching Lita walk away. The Rebellion was very much _not_ their business. Their business was surviving under the Empire, and keeping their hands clean, because the Empire would take any excuse to destroy them, and there were none who would object to a bunch of stateless refugees, already under suspicion by their very existence, being finally taken care of in the most final of ways.

 

________

 

The day of the wedding dawned in a downpour, which just figured. Kes stared out the window at the bleak landscape and thought about how crowded it was going to be, indoors. They’d filled every bedroom, and a few people were even staying in temporary quarters hastily erected outdoors, but it was nothing new to them. They’d expected at least a storm, so there was a big makeshift roofed pavilion stretched out from the rear wall of the compound out over part of the garden, so there’d be room for dancing even if the rain didn’t let up.

As long as the wind didn’t pick up too much, which it well might. It was never boring, on this planet. It wasn’t quite warm enough, it was paradoxically both too rainy and not wet enough, and the winters were dreary and too long. Someday, someday soon maybe, they’d have enough money to buy a better, bigger place, but first they had to find a hospitable planet, and so far everything with the right climate was too expensive or too interesting to the Empire.

Someday. Maybe by the time their son was old enough to remember, and the thought of that made Kes more cheerful. He turned to see if Shara was awake yet, and she was lying on her side in bed watching him.

“Morning,” he said. “How’d you sleep?”

She smiled, and held out her hand toward him, so he came over and sat on the edge of the bed. She took his hand and put it on her belly, and he laughed in delight at the little fluttery motions against his palm. “He says good morning too,” she murmured. “He kicked me all night, the little jerk.”

“He’s getting big,” Kes said. Some of it was that Shara had given up wearing her old clothes, and now was spending her days mostly in pretty dresses borrowed from the other women here, but some of it was that her belly had grown to the point that it was obvious now. It seemed to have happened suddenly. He bent and kissed her belly. “You look so beautiful like this.”

She laughed, and petted his hair. “Keep sweet-talking,” she said.

“It’s the truth,” he said, achingly sincere.

“I wish he didn’t feel the need to dance on my bladder quite so much,” she said, and pushed herself up, a little awkwardly. He got up and helped her to her feet, and she waved him off, but when he gently put his hand at the small of her back, she leaned in to kiss him. They stood like that for a moment, and she looked up at him, inscrutable but smiling slightly. Then she frowned, and said, “It _would_ rain.”

“Of course,” he said. “This planet has no manners.” He kissed her forehead. “It won’t matter, everyone will have fun anyway.”

“Norasol insisted on making my skirt be floor-length,” Shara said. “I’m just going to have a muddy hem the whole night.”

“Oh,” Kes said, “right. Well--”

“I’ll live,” she said. “Now, I really have to pee.” She pulled her robe on, and left.

Kes dressed in old clothes to go get muddy setting up with the others, which he did, but Tito sent him inside after a little while, telling him to go and bathe and get pretty.

Shara was ensconced in a chair with several of the elders, and Kes smiled to himself to see it: Lita was holding court, more or less, ensuring that everyone had a chance to see Shara. Shara was in her finery already, beautifully arrayed-- the skirt was new, though Kes recognized some of the embroidery on it and could tell it had been repurposed from several old garments, but skillfully done, and the blouse was absolutely brand-new, woven by Norasol; how she’d knocked it out in the required time he couldn’t guess, but he had a suspicion she’d started it for someone else. Shara also was wearing a shawl of Lita’s, with some fine beadwork on it that Kes knew came from Xicul, one of the remaining relics from that place. She looked absolutely beautiful, and he only realized he’d been staring at her when one of the older women pointed at him and started to laugh.

“That’s how a man _should_ look when he sees his wife,” one of the old men said.

“Don’t you drip on me,” Shara said, as he shifted his weight as if to come over to her. “You’re covered in mud, don’t you dare.”

Everyone laughed, at that. “I wasn’t going to get any on you,” Kes said defensively. “I’m just going to go get cleaned up now.”

“You’d better,” Lita said.

He went into his room, where he’d already laid out the outfit he was planning to wear. But there was a jacket he didn’t recognize, a very nice one, beautifully tailored and in the latest fashion, clearly commercially purchased and not homemade, set out next to the shirt he’d borrowed again from Tito. It was a strong dark red, a lucky color; traditionally, Oaxctli men wore somber colors while the women were bright as birds, and so their formal wear was almost always black. But someone had clearly set this jacket out for him to wear. He hadn’t seen it before; it might be Tito’s, who was close enough to his size.

He went and cleaned up, and came back to dress, pondering the jacket. It was brand-new, and looked unworn. It wasn’t really Tito’s style; he and Tito had both been raised with very utilitarian tastes in clothes. But Zia might have bought it for him; she was more fashionable, like Shara was.

He tried it on, and it fit him perfectly. It would be too long in the sleeves for Tito, he thought, inspecting his wrists. It really fit him well, and suited him beautifully. Well, it wasn’t traditional, but it fit him much better than the more-traditional black jacket he’d been planning to wear, which had belonged to someone shorter before it had been handed down to him when he was still a bit shorter than he was currently. Norasol had done her best with altering it, but there just hadn’t been any more to let out in the sleeves.

Well, clearly he had permission to wear it, if it was in here, so he put it on, and tried not to preen too much. It really looked nice. In another life, he thought a bit wistfully, he’d have been interested in dressing nicely, but that wasn’t the kind of lifestyle he had.

He went back out to join the others, and someone pressed a drink into his hand, and that was how the party started.

 

There wasn’t much to a traditional Oaxctli wedding. The hard questions had been at the engagement ceremony. This was just a party. Kes and Shara exchanged rings because it was a thing in the culture at large, and she was used to that and had expected it. Kes never wore jewelry, and had known he’d be uncomfortable wearing a ring on his fingers-- his hands got so battered-- so he had already negotiated a chain to wear it around his neck instead. He figured he could just about make himself keep something like that on. Shara had agreed to it, so she gave him the ring and put it right onto the chain for him, then put it over his head and kissed him as his face came through the opening, which pleased him and everyone thought was cute.

There weren’t any promises to make, as they’d already made those in front of witnesses, and there weren’t any speeches to make, so they just danced, and that suited Kes just fine.

Things got blurry fast, thanks to the alcohol; given Shara’s condition, anyone who wanted to drink a toast had to do so with Kes, so he bore the brunt of it, rather as he had at the engagement. He didn’t mind, but he was struggling to pace himself. He did all right, but it meant his memories of the evening would never be sharp. Everything was bright, despite the dimness, and it stopped raining, even though it stayed gloomy, and there was good food, and almost everyone he loved was there, and they all laughed and sang and danced together.

Shara was beautiful and bright and charmed everyone, gracefully swirling the hem of the skirt which was clearly much heavier and fuller than anything she was used to wearing. She danced and sang along as soon as anyone taught her the words, she impressed the old folks, she enchanted the little kids, she dazzled everyone with her wit, she told some great jokes.

Mostly she dazzled Kes, who kept coming back to sit at her feet or stand next to her. Sento laughed at him at one point-- and Sento was having a blast, basking in the reflected glory of his beautiful and wise daughter, but also holding his own in conversation pretty well-- and Kes was too far gone to even be embarrassed.

“You look so awestruck,” Sento said.

Kes blinked up at him. “Shouldn’t I be?” he said.

Sento laughed, and sat down next to him. There was a step in the floor, where one part of the structure had been joined to the other offset by a handspan. Shara was sitting on a chair and Kes was leaning against her leg. “That coat suits you,” he said.

Kes looked down. It was comfortable, which most of his formalwear previously hadn’t been, since this actually was the right size to fit him, so he’d sort of forgotten he was wearing it. “I like it a lot,” he said, a little wistful. “I wish I could keep it.”

Sento gave him a look, tilting his head. “Why can’t you keep it?” he asked.

“Oh,” Kes said, “it’s not mine. Somebody left it in my room this morning but I assume whoever it is will want it back.”

Sento laughed. “You silly ass,” he said, “it’s a gift.”

Kes blinked at him. “From who?” he said. “Nobody said anything, I just thought it was one of my cousins lending me--” His brain caught up with his mouth. “Is it from you?”

Sento laughed again, but it wasn’t a mean laugh, he was delighted. “Of course it is,” he said. “Who else has even been off-world to anywhere there are markets you can buy things like that?”

Kes put his arms around Sento and embraced him, since he was drunk enough not to hesitate. His own people were physically demonstrative, and Sento and Shara were too when they were together, but so far there wasn’t much cross-over; he hadn’t touched Sento much. But he hugged him now, and Sento hugged him back, and said, “Shara told me to get you something, she wasn’t going to have you wear that old black coat of yours with the sleeves too short.”

“Gotcha,” Marita said, snagging a holopic of the two of them, and Kes laughed in delight. Marita had taken so many holopics tonight, like they never were all together like this.

Well, they rarely were, so it was notable.

He managed to switch to water before he got embarrassing, and everyone else was drunk enough not to call him on it. Tito was really spectacularly drunk, hanging on his shoulder and complaining that Kes just had to outdo him by getting pregnant first. Apparently he and Zia were talking about it but hadn’t agreed yet on a schedule; they both wanted to be able to stay home with the infant for some time, and their work schedules wouldn’t align.

“Good on you for just-- going for it,” Tito said, and Kes shook his head ruefully.

“It wasn’t on purpose,” he said.

Tito laughed until he fell over. “Who makes that kind of mistake!” he said.

“Apparently, me,” Kes said.

Tito rolled around, and eventually put his head in Kes’s lap. “Maybe that’s the way to do it,” he said mournfully. “Maybe we’re overthinking this.”

“You need to talk that over,” Kes said. “Don’t do what I did, it was fucking stupid. We almost broke up, Tito, it wasn’t a good time.”

“Oh,” Tito said, and lay there for long enough that Kes figured he’d probably passed out. He waited until Zia came by, and gestured at her. She came over and sat next to him.

“Is my idiot boy asleep on you?” Zia asked, laughing.

“I think so,” Kes said. “He wants a baby, Zia, you guys gotta talk about that.”

“We have been,” she said, expression going somber. She looked a little wistful. “I want to, Kes, but I’m afraid. It’s not just time and money-- it’s the whole situation, with the Empire, with everything. You know Lita was saying, there’s talk that the Emperor might dissolve the Senate entirely?”

“I heard that,” Kes said. “But what can you do? You have to live, you know?”

“We do,” Zia said, “we do have to live, but-- if we have to run, or something-- it’s just so much to consider, and if you have a baby too--”

“It’s not going to get any better any time soon,” Kes said. “There’s not going to be a better time. You have to either take the chance, or resign yourself to not doing it at all. You know?”

“I know,” Zia said, pulling her knees up. She reached over and ruffled Tito’s hair. Tito grumbled, but didn’t open his eyes. She sighed. “You’re brave, is all.”

“Wouldn’t call it that,” Kes said. He noticed, across the room, that Norasol was speaking to Lita, very close-in and intensely, and that was notable because the two of them hadn’t exchanged more than a few words in the last nearly a week, and Norasol was furious with Lita about something for which Lita either would not or could not apologize.

Zia followed the direction of his gaze. “We still don’t know what they’re fighting about?” she said.

Kes shook his head slowly, and reached down and patted Tito’s face. “Hey,” he said, “get off me.”

“No,” Tito said.

“Come on,” Zia said, leaning over to look at him.

“Oh, hey,” Tito said, seeing her. He rolled onto his back and smiled, wobbly and bedazzled. He was so drunk; Kes laughed at him, and shoved him so he sat up.

“C’mere,” Zia said, “don’t sleep on Kes, not when I’m available for that purpose.”

Tito said something that was probably his particular brand of nauseatingly-incompetent flirting, but Kes was already moving, across the room indirectly to fetch up against the wall in an alcove where he could see but not hear Norasol.

“-- have done the same,” Lita was saying, low and insistent.

“I absolutely would _not_ have,” Norasol said.

“I know where your sympathies lie,” Lita said.

“My sympathies, sure,” Norasol said, “but I am not a fool, I am not selfish, and I know that the risks are not just to myself! I wouldn’t endanger everyone else like that.”

“I _had_ to do something,” Lita said. “I couldn’t just-- he could have exposed Hombros, and then everyone would be at risk, everything could be destroyed!” Kes had to think for a moment, but remembered how embarrassed he’d been when he’d sussed out that his mother and Norasol used “shoulders” as a codename for Bail Organa because he was so well-built. It remained one of the excruciating realities of his adolescence, realizing that they admired the man aesthetically.

Sure, it was convenient as well because nobody would have expected they’d be talking about someone of such importance so casually, but Kes had come to realize that the genuine aesthetic attraction played a significant role. Norasol was pretty same-sex-attraction-aligned, but had made a point of specifying that she wasn’t _blind_ , and Kes had recused himself from the rest of the conversation on grounds of not being okay knowing that. He had to look the man in the face, for stars’ sake.

“Hombros can take care of himself,” Norasol said.

“Not in this he couldn’t,” Lita said. “You don’t know what they’d discovered, Niti, it was--”

“Kes,” Uni said loudly, “what are you doing hiding over here?”

Kes spun around. “Uni,” he said. Uni had shouted, and was standing right in Norasol’s line of sight, and Kes sagged back against the wall. “I’m drunk as hell, Uni, leave me alone.”

“Not too drunk to do your duty, I hope!” Uni said, bodily hauling him away from the wall and yanking him in to shake him, slinging an arm around his shoulder. Uni was short but about twice Kes’s weight, so there was no resisting him.

Kes caught Norasol’s look as Uni spun him. Oh, she knew he’d been eavesdropping. Great, that always went well for him. “Oh,” he said, “well, Uni, you know, I’ve pretty convincingly done my duty, she’s thirty-two weeks pregnant.”

Uni didn’t really have an answer for that; he was extremely drunk. Kes disentangled himself gently and propelled the man back toward the rest of the party. When he turned, Norasol was leaning against the wall with her arms folded over her chest, and Lita was looking mulish next to her.

He gave up on subterfuge and went over. “You’re not that drunk,” Norasol said.

“You’re keeping something from us,” Kes said to Lita.

Both women looked a little startled; he wasn’t normally so direct. “There’s no point concerning yourself with it,” Lita said.

A flare of pure anger passed through Kes and left him with his teeth gritted. He breathed slowly against the weird light hollow feeling in his chest and head, and said, “I know everyone thinks I’m stupid, but you at least used to talk a good line about that not being true.”

“Kes,” Lita said, soft and shocked, indignant.

“I have really good hearing,” he said. “All night I’ve been hearing people laughing about how happy I seem to be, to have gone from my domineering mothers straight to a wife who’ll boss me around like I seem to need. Big sweet stupid Kes, don’t think I don’t hear it. I can laugh at it, but only if I don’t think that you believe that too.”

“Nobody thinks you’re stupid,” Norasol snapped defensively.

Kes laughed. “Apparently, _you_ do, if you expect me to just take your word for it,” he said. He shook his head. “Fine, don’t tell _me_ anything, but don’t you think some of the grown adults with healthy intellects deserve to know what’s going on?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but walked away.

Shara was sitting in a chair with her feet up, across from Zia, and looked up as he approached, mid-laugh. “There you are,” she said, and held out her arms.

He dropped into the chair next to her, and leaned in to give her a kiss. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” she said, waving a hand. “I’ve been sitting, I’m all right.” She’d started having trouble with her feet swelling, but apart from that seemed the picture of health. It didn’t keep Kes from checking in on her nervously all the time. “Zia says she and Tito will start trying to get a baby soon.”

“Oh,” Kes said, and pushed away his lingering anger at his mother, his gathered annoyance at the attending guests’ gossip, his tiredness and the bruises Uni had left on him. “Really?”

Zia sighed. “Really,” she said. Then she rolled her eyes. “If Tito ever recovers from the hangover he’s going to have. I had to help him back to our bedroom.”

Kes laughed. “I didn’t do that to him,” he said.

“You were right,” Zia said. “There’s never going to be a good time. We might as well.”

Kes grinned at her. “You might as well,” he said. “Then little Poe will have a cousin nearly his own age!”

“We’re not naming him Poe,” Shara said, smacking his arm languidly.

“We’re definitely not naming him _Elan_ ,” Kes said. “I’ll leave most things up to you but that name is terrible.”

“I like it,” Shara said.

“Nobody else does,” Kes said. “Come on, you can’t saddle a kid with a moniker like that.”

Zia wrinkled her nose delicately. “I don’t like either of those names,” she said. “Poe just seems so-- short.”

“It’s the same length as Kes,” Kes pointed out. “One syllable, three letters, c’mon.”

“I guess,” Zia said. “I don’t know. I guess when he’s little, but think about it, a grown-ass man named Poe?”

“It’s a fine name,” Kes said.

Shara may have rolled her eyes; he didn’t catch the whole gesture. He could infer it, though. He leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms, and watched her eyes follow him with interest. He’d sobered up enough, and had enough water, that he wouldn’t be in a world of hurt tomorrow, at least. Which was good, because there was a lot to do, to take advantage of everyone still being here.

“It’s a good thing you’re pretty,” Zia said, with dry amusement.

“He _is_ pretty,” Shara said, still staring at him.

“You should go to bed,” Zia said. “Tomorrow’s a long day. And I have to go make sure my husband doesn’t fall out of bed.” She stood up.

“You prize me for my wit, primarily,” Kes said, getting up and pulling Shara to her feet. She put her hands against his chest and looked up at him, smiling gently.

“Actually,” she said, “kinda, yeah,” and stood on her toes to kiss him chastely.

He laughed. She couldn’t have known that was what he wanted to hear, could she? “Come on, now,” he said.

“I do,” she insisted. “Please, beautiful young men throw themselves at me all the time. I wouldn’t have looked twice at you if you weren’t so damn funny.” She threaded her arm through his. “Goodnight, Zia,” she said, “good luck with your drunk fellow. If he rouses, maybe he can make you a baby tonight!”

“Ha,” Zia said, deeply skeptical.

“If he does please don’t share details,” Kes said, which won him a laugh.

Shara tucked herself up against his side as they went down the hallway to their room, and he put his arm around her. “That was fun,” she said. “I had such a wonderful time. Do you have parties like that often?”

“Not like that,” Kes said. “That was really something.”

As soon as the bedroom door closed behind them, Shara said, “I saw how Uni spoiled your eavesdropping.”

Kes shook his head, annoyed. “Fucking Uni’s a fucking sot,” he said. “He drinks so goddamn much.”

“You spoke to them after, though,” Shara said. “Lita looked shocked, and I’ve never seen whatever expression that was on Norasol’s face. What did you year?”

“Not enough to know anything,” Kes said. He sighed, and sat down on the bed. “They’re hiding something. I can’t tell what. They mentioned Bail Organa. Something that could be dangerous to him.”

“Nothing could be dangerous to him,” Shara said. “Alderaan is the jewel of the Core. I’ve never been there, by the way, and I can’t wait to go.”

Kes shook his head, but smiled. “It _is_ beautiful,” he said. “You’ll love it there.”

She came and sat next to him, and he pulled her into his lap, facing him, her belly resting against his, and the baby kicked, and he kissed her and she pushed him down flat on his back and that was the end of discussion for that night.

 

________

 

“I can’t wait to meet you,” Kes said sleepily, and was rewarded with a kick to the face. Shara laughed, and moved her hand in his hair, petting his scalp.

“I can’t decide if it’s that he likes it when you talk, or hates it when you talk,” she said.

“He loves it,” Kes said, nuzzling his cheek against the bare skin of her distended belly. “Don’t you, Poe?”

“We’re not calling him Poe,” Shara said, stretching lazily and tugging gently on Kes’s short hair.

“Sure we are,” Kes said. “He likes it. Don’t you, Poe?”

This time it was probably an elbow, he figured. “Ow,” Shara said, “don’t antagonize him.”

“Be nice to your mother, Poe,” Kes said. He was moving less, lately, but Norasol had assured them it was only because he was getting crowded. The med droid had backed her up, and had obligingly confirmed basically all her other statements, including that it was a boy and he was perfectly healthy and could be born at any time without complication and was in fact already turned almost correctly.

Norasol predicted three more weeks, but the med droid hadn’t been quite so confident. So they were packing up to leave for Alderaan tomorrow. Which meant a busy day ahead of them today, but Kes wasn’t really ready to get out of bed. Not with Shara’s hands in his hair and their baby moving, alive and palpable against his face, and the sun starting to come through the window a little.

“The nicest thing he could do for me would be to _get out_ ,” Shara said.

“Mm,” Kes said, and kissed her belly. “Don’t rush him. He’ll come when he’s ready.”

“What about when _I’m_ ready,” Shara grumbled.

“You don’t really get a vote,” Kes said. Poe, or whatever his name was, wriggled against Kes’s face, and he kissed him again; this wasn’t a bony part, whatever it was that was getting mushed against Shara’s abdominal wall. “I’m kidding, you get a vote at Alderaan. They have their methods and whatever.”

“Then let’s get packing,” Shara said.

Kes laughed. “You’re telling me to get my lazy ass off you and get to work,” he said, rolling over and looking up at her.

“I would never call your ass lazy,” Shara said. “But your shapely ass does have work to go do.”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, pushing himself up and bending to kiss her. She returned the kiss, closing her eyes and leaning in. She’d been grumpy lately, but still pretty affectionate with him, and he was counting himself lucky, remembering how mean Marita had gotten towards the end.

And her baby had come two weeks early, to everyone’s surprise, which was why the birth had happened here, and with only Kes and Norasol in attendance, instead of somewhere of her choosing.

Shara sighed and scooted herself toward the edge of the bed a little, but lay back and watched him as he dressed. He laughed at her, and she motioned with her hand, indicating that he should turn around so she could get a better look at him. He obligingly did a little turn for her benefit.

“That’s a hell of a nice ass you got, there, kid,” she said.

He laughed. “Thanks,” he said, and pulled his trousers on.

“You should wear tighter pants,” she said.

“I gotta be able to move, woman,” he said. “You know I’m not just decorative.” He pulled on a clean shirt and looked around for some socks.

“Hand me that dress,” Shara said, and he plucked the indicated garment off the hook on the wall and brought it over, helping pull it down onto her. He kissed her mouth as her face emerged from the neck opening of the garment. “Mm,” she murmured, “you’re decorative as far as I’m concerned.”

He laughed at that. “Only for you,” he said, and got down on the floor to put her socks on for her. She put her feet in his lap and reached over to pet his hair.

“I think your socks are still in the machine,” she said.

“Oh yeah,” Kes said, “I got yours out but I didn’t finish mine.” He got to his feet and helped Shara stand up so she could pull the dress down and adjust it comfortably, and then went out and down the hallway in his bare feet.

“You’re finally up,” Sento said, poking his head out from the corridor that went toward the kitchen.

“It’s not even that late,” Kes said. “Shh.”

“Well,” Sento said, “I’ve already got all my stuff ready, it’s down on the grav-sled. There’s some room in the container, I put all the baby clothes in there already.”

“Oh, good,” Kes said. He jerked his head toward the kitchen. “Mama here?”

Sento nodded, and made a face. “Norasol’s still giving her the silent treatment,” he said quietly, leaning in.

“I don’t know what the hell their problem still is,” Kes said, annoyed. Norasol had been giving _him_ the silent treatment, too, more or less, ever since the wedding, and it was getting really goddamned old. “It’s going to make this a hell of an annoying ride, I’ll tell you what.”

“They’ll get over it,” Sento said, shrugging. “I imagine a baby’s plenty of distraction.”

Kes shook his head a little, and went down the corridor to the laundry room. He hauled the clothes out of the press and into a basket, and was on his way back toward the bedroom when he heard someone shouting outside. He set the basket down and stuck his head out the closest window.

He caught a glimpse of someone running up the front steps to the door to the kitchen, but he couldn’t see who it was. Further down the road, though, he could see dust kicked up; something was coming, something big.

He almost ran into Sento in the corridor. “What,” Sento said.

“Go to Shara,” Kes said, “get her shoes, something’s-- I don’t know.” He ran to the kitchen, and Ori was there, panting breathlessly in Norasol’s arms. Lita was standing at the door, looking out where the boy had come running in. “What,” Kes said.

“Imperials,” Ori managed, “coming-- here-- Imperials.”

Kes shook his head slightly. They had nothing to hide from the Empire, no reason to be afraid. “So?” he said.

“Soldiers,” Ori said, “guns,” and he was too young to remember Xicul-- _Kes_ was too young to remember Xicul-- but they had the terror of that instilled in them right down to the marrow.

“We have nothing to hide,” Kes said, and Norasol gave him a tight-lipped look and he suddenly--

He suddenly understood what they’d been fighting about. Suddenly understood what it was that Lita had done to protect Organa.

He turned to Lita, and it felt like it took him an hour just to finish the gesture. “We have nothing to hide,” he said again, fainter, and Lita turned to look at him, and her expression was--

Guilty.

Kes breathed in slowly, and said, “Mother, what have you done?”

She shook her head very slightly, but it wasn’t a denial. “I had to,” she said.

“Mother,” he said again, “what have you _done_ ?” She’d _involved_ herself. It didn’t matter what she’d done, what mattered was that the Empire knew it was her. They were all dead.

“Go,” Lita said. “All of you-- go. Get out. Even if I turn myself in they won’t stop. You have to run.”

“Shara _can’t run_ ,” Kes said viciously, but he grabbed Ori and bodily dragged him down the hallway, out of harm’s way, away from where the rumble of engines was audible now.

Norasol followed. At the intersection of the main corridor with the hallway to the bedrooms, Kes paused and looked back. Lita was standing in the open doorway, silhouetted, arms folded in front of herself and chin up.

It wouldn’t be enough.

“She got in the middle of a Rebel mission,” Norasol said, “she sheltered a spy, got him out under our diplomatic immunity--”

“They’ll kill every one of us,” Kes said. “They’ll-- every one, you know they will.”

Ori was crying, and he shoved the boy into Norasol’s arms. “Go,” he said. “Get them out!”

“You can’t stop them either,” Norasol said, giving Ori a shove so he kept stumbling down the hallway.

Kes went through his pockets quickly, pulling out loose credit chips and assorted bolts and washers and a wrench and a small pair of pliers. He pulled the chain with the ring Shara had given him off over his head, and dumped it all into Norasol’s hands. “I can slow them down,” he said.

“No, Kes!” Norasol said. “You can’t fight them!”

“I’m not stupid, I know that,” he said. He could hear voices, now, heard Lita’s voice. “Will you _go already_.”

“No,” Norasol said.

“You can get Shara out,” Kes said. “I can’t. _Go_.”

There was a thud, distinctive: a body, someone being struck and falling. Norasol flinched, then turned and ran down the hallway.

Kes turned and walked back down the hallway.

“I am the leader of the Oaxctli,” Lita was saying, voice strained, from the floor. “It’s me you want, I am the one that has defied you.”

“We know he’s here,” a man’s voice said. “We’ll kill everyone if he doesn’t turn himself in. Starting with you, old woman.”

There was another thud, and the unmistakable sound of breath leaving someone’s body: he’d kicked Lita in the gut, surely.

“There is no him,” Lita said thinly, bewildered. “There is no-- it’s me you want.”

“Our source said _the leader_ ,” the man said. “Surely that’s not you, a pathetic old woman.”

Fucking Imperials. Wouldn’t know a woman’s worth even if there were a price tag on her. Kes steeled himself, but there was nothing for it: there was another horrible sound as someone kicked Lita in the stomach again. They’d kill her soon. It wouldn't buy the others enough time, and then the Imperials would be bloodthirsty. He knew how this worked. 

Kes took a deep breath, put his hands on his head and walked into the kitchen. “Please don’t hurt my mother,” he said.

“No,” Lita said raggedly from the floor.

The officer came to stand in front of him, hands on hips. “Hiding behind your mother, hm?”

“You know how mothers are, sir,” Kes said.

“Cuff him,” the officer said, and Kes held his hands out in front of himself, but they turned him around and wrenched his arms back. He made himself stay still, and looked down at his mother on the floor. Lita had curled into a ball and was lying on her side, staring at him in despair. Her face was swollen where someone had hit her.

“No,” she said.

He didn’t dare answer her, not even with a hand signal.

They dragged him back to the transport, and threw him in. He lay there without moving, and tried to estimate how long it took the rest of the troop to come back and file in after him. It wasn’t long, it certainly wasn’t long enough for them to have searched the entire compound. His only scrap of comfort was that he didn’t hear blaster fire before the rest of the troop poured into the vehicle, and they drove away.

Didn’t mean they hadn’t torched the place, but at least it meant they hadn’t shot anyone first.

It would likely be all the comfort he got, so he clung to it.


End file.
